On Thu, 02 Apr 2009 06:56:46 -0500, HeyBub wrote:

Tony Sivori wrote:
On Wed, 01 Apr 2009 17:34:13 -0500, HeyBub wrote:

Still, the Mac is more popular than various versions of Linux which, at
less than 1% of the market,

Linux usage is way above 1%, not under. Since there is no registration,
and typically no sale involved, the numbers are very hard to track.

For instance, I bought a new Dell last week. It came with Vista Home
Premium. I asked Dell if I could get it with Ubuntu, but they would not
sell that particular model with Ubuntu.

This weekend I'll be wiping Vista and installing Linux. But Microsoft
got paid, and Microsoft will forever count my computer as a Vista
computer.

That often cited 1% market share figure is 100% bogus.


The percentage of desktop machine running Linux may not be precise, but it
is accurate.

No, it isn't. For several reasons. One is the websites that are monitored.
Less technically oriented websites tend to have fewer Linux users.

The biggest reason is browser spoofing. Many Microsoft FrontPage created
websites checked the browser and OS. It was fairly common practice to
throw up a bogus error page that any non MS Explorer browser was
incompatible.

So the KDE / Konqueror developers made it point and click easy for
Konqueror users to identify themselves to websites as Internet Explorer
users running any selected Microsoft OS. Many users select this option to
eliminate the bogus website error messages.

As of April 2nd, Linux market share was reported to be 0.90% by the Market
Share report of Net Applications.
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/repo...qpcustom=Linux

"Estimates for the desktop market share of Linux range from less than one
percent to almost two percent..."

(with references)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux#M...are_and_uptake

Outdated. W3C reports over 2% currently, and for reasons listed above even
that number is lower than the real number.

As to your claim that your new machine will always count as a Vista
machine, that's not how Net Applications tabulates current usage. While
Microsoft is grateful for your purchase, Net Applications monitors net
traffic and counts which OS is the current traffic generator.

It only counts what it is told. The default KDE web browser allows
spoofing.

If you like Linux, go for it.

I do. I will.

For me, having to choose between Linux and having a girlfriend is a
no-brainer.

You can do better than that.

--
Tony Sivori
Due to spam, I'm filtering all Google Groups posters.